Then the leaving began. Every ten or fifteen minutes a girl was sent away, now in one direction, now in the opposite. It was a pitiful finale to a heroic chapter in the history of Russian womanhood. The Battalion had struggled gallantly to stem the tide of destruction and ignorance. But the tide was too mighty. It had swamped all that was good and noble in Russia. Russia herself seemed wrecked forever in that maelstrom of unbridled passions. One did not want to live. There remained only the honor and satisfaction of going down with all that had been upright in the country. Everything seemed upside down. There was no friendship, only hatred. The unselfishness of the days when Tsarism was overthrown, now, after the fall of Kerensky, had given way to a wave of greed and revenge. Every soldier, every peasant and workman, saw red. They all hunted phantom bourgeois, bloodsuckers, exploiters. When freedom was first born there was universal brotherhood and joy. Now intolerance and petty covetousness reigned supreme…

There was a time when even Brusilov and Kerensky thought that self-sacrificing women would shame the men. But the men knew no shame.